Building Bridges, Burning Bridges

[T]he NPIC [non-profit industrial complex] contributes to a mode of organizing that is ultimately unsustainable. To radically change society, we must build mass movements that can topple systems of domination. [...] However, the NPIC encourages us to think of social justice organizing as a career; that is, you do the work if you can get paid for it. However, a mass movement requires the involvement of millions of people, most of whom cannot get paid. By trying to do grassroots organizing through this careerist model, we are essentially asking a few people to work more than full-time to make up for the work that needs to be done by the millions.

In addition, the NPIC promotes a social movement culture that is non-collaborative, narrowly focused, and competitive. To retain the support of benefactors, groups must compete with each other for funding by promoting only their own work, whether or not their organizing* strategies are successful. This culture prevents activists from having collaborative dialogues where we can honestly share our failures as well as our successes. In addition, after being forced to frame everything we do as a “success,” we become stuck in having to repeat the same strategies because we insisted to funders they were successful, even if they were not. Consequently, we become inflexible rather than fluid and ever changing in our strategies, which is what a movement for social transformation really requires. And as we become more concerned with attracting funders than with organizing mass-based movements, we start niche marketing the work of our organizations. Framing our organizations as working on a particular issue or a particular strategy, we lose perspective on the larger goals of our work. Thus, niche marketing encourages us to build a fractured movement rather than mass-based movements for social change.

While this critique seems as though it might have been written with certain animal welfare and/or rights groups in mind, it’s actually an excerpt from the 2009 anthology The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (see “Introduction” by Andrea Smith). Edited by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, the authors examine the NPIC both generally, and in relation to feminist and anti-racist social justice movements. Most likely, animal advocacy was not on the editors’ or contributors’ radars when writing and compiling the sixteen essays featured in this volume.

Even so, the above observations are equally applicable to the animal advocacy movement. In regards to competition between groups, the HSUS’s deceptive fundraising tactics provide an excellent (and unfortunate) example of destructive rivalries. While local humane societies are not affiliated with HSUS proper, the HSUS actively perpetuates the popular misconception that they are. In this way, the HSUS uses (appropriates, one might say) the difficult, on-the-ground work of smaller groups in order to raise monies for its own coffers.

While the HSUS is quick, for instance, to call for the “euthanasia” of pit bulls used and abused in dogfighting rings, the group is even quicker to “borrow” (steal) the likenesses of rescued pit bulls, slap them on HSUS fundraising materials, and solicit donations, ostensibly for the dogs’ “rescue” and “care.” In reality, the funds collected by the HSUS stay with the HSUS – while other animal advocacy groups foster, rehabilitate and rehome survivor/victims such as Fay and the Vicktory dogs.**

This sort of dishonest, immoral deceit – excuse me, “competition” – does nothing to further the interests of the animals whom the HSUS claims to want to help. For instance, the HSUS only donated $5,000 – a measly percentage of its $1,000,000 fundraising goal – towards Fay’s care (and then only in the face of public outrage and legal repercussions). In misleading its donors, the HSUS is not only failing to highlight the work of other animal advocacy groups, but is essentially stealing donations intended for them. If the goal is protecting animals – rather than increasing one’s “revenue” – shouldn’t like-minded individuals and organizations support one another whenever possible?

Of course, any discussion of the NPIC wouldn’t be complete without a mention of PETA. While I’ve no desire to step on the landmine that is the abolition vs. welfare debate (and besides, I believe Stephanie plans on tackling this topic in the near future; far be it from me to steal her thunder!) the setting of watered-down, attainable goals, framing failures as successes, and recycling of unsuccessful strategies are par for the course with PETA.

Though it claims to be an animal rights organization, most of its campaigns are welfarist in nature: Pressuring designers to stop using fur, and chains to stop selling it – all the while saying little-to-nothing about leather, wool, silk and other animal skins and fibers. Launching a boycott of flesh-peddling KFC – until it switches to controlled-atmosphere killing (CAK) of birds. Actively opposing the no-kill movement, instead insisting that it “must” kill animals (and campaigning alongside the HSUS and ASPCA to have pit bulls destroyed). Celebrating twenty years of objectifying women in its ads, including single-issue celebrity “spokespeople,” who may eschew fur while consuming “meat.”

By positioning itself as an animal rights group (indeed, THE animal rights group) and then engaging primarily in welfarist campaigns, PETA misrepresents the animal rights position. The group may be outrageous and offensive; but extreme and radical? Hardly. (Compare PETA’s campaigns, for example, to those of Peaceful Prairie.) In setting relatively accessible, cherry-picked goals, PETA is able to frame welfarist reforms as animal rights “successes” – thus using these victories to raise future funds. Indeed, some campaigns have no clear measure of “success.” Does persuading Keeley Hazell to appear naked in softcore anti-fur ads constitute a “victory”? If so, FHM is, like, the newest face of vegan activism! The horny teenage brother of the animal rights movement to Singer’s grumpy godfather, if you will.

Anyhow, the animal advocacy movement is rife with examples such as these. My goal in pointing them out isn’t to “tear” any one group or individual down, but rather to examine how such tactics are counterproductive. Monopoly building and idol worship are harmful and self-destructive; they stifle growth and innovation, which as Smith points out, every mass-based social movement needs to thrive and succeed. And I desperately want to see the animal liberation movement succeed – genuinely succeed.

* Initially I mistyped this word as “advertising.” Hello, Freudian slip!

** See Nathan Winograd’s “Betrayal & Deceit at the Humane Society of the United States” for a more comprehensive look at the HSUS’s unethical business practices.